Some of you might remember my post (May 21) explaining how alcohol
causes a strong drop in BG for a few hours. In that post I offered a
personal opinion that, due to our higher cardiovascular risks, there was
probably GREAT benefit for us in the habit of a daily drink.... as long
as we "feed the low" with carbs while the liver is working on the alcohol.
There is now an analysis of data from the San Antonio Heart Study,
confirming and quantifying these benefits. Data were adjusted for age,
BMI, smoking, geographic location, gender, socioeconomic status, and
ethnicity (Mexican American vs. European American descent; the summary
does not describe African American or Asian Americans as participating
in the study). I am quoting from Damian McNamara in "Clinical
Psychiatric News", but you can all see a shorter version, with many
paragraphs identical, at
http://www.diabetesincontrol.com/issue169/item15.shtml
Non-diabetic light drinkers (7-14 drinks per week) had a 20% reduction
in mortality after a mean follow-up of 14 years. Diabetics (T2 and T1,
probably only a small portion IDDM) had a 35% REDUCTION IN RISK.
"Diabetics who reported drinking a small amount more frequently--such as
having a drink daily or almost daily-- reaped the highest benefit (a 46%
reduction) compared with diabetic abstainers."
The next paragraph, however, points out that beer drinking provided no
significant mortality improvement in any of the study subgroups, and
mixed drinks/liquor was much less beneficial for diabetics (only a 23%
reduction in risk, and these drinks were associated with a 38% greater
risk in non-diabetics). It then states that "Diabetics who reported
drinking any amount of wine had the greatest benefit--a 65% reduction in
mortality...."
I believe that that rest of this sentence should have said "in
comparison to diabetic abstainers", not "compared with no reduction in
nondiabetic wine drinkers". (The study found a 20% reduction in
mortality for light drinkers without diabetes. Mixed drinks/liquor was
worse than abstaining, and beer drinking provided no significant
improvements in mortality. So the 20% improvement for non-diabetics MUST
have been dominiated by improvements for the wine drinkers.)
The study didn't collect data on red vs. white. (I'll drink either
color, as long as they taste YUMMY! Although other, smaller studies
suggest that red is better.) I've no idea what might cause the huge
difference between Beer and Wine.
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